Mid Blah-ugust Check-in

So here I am, about halfway through Blaugust and so far I’ve been able to mostly keep up with the daily postings. I’m getting tired of it, you guys.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that I’m finally getting around to writing some of the posts that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while now. But writing needs two things from me: energy and enthusiasm. The energy to form my thoughts into cohesive sentences and type them up, and the enthusiasm to enjoy doing it and feeling like it matters somehow. Both of those reserves feel pretty drained, like I’m running on fumes now. Hell, I keep staring at the textbox for several minutes, trying to think of what else to say so I can fill my quota of 10 sentences. My brain is even having problems remembering the right word I want to use sometimes. It’s rebelling!

I even having problems playing some games lately. Anything that’s not pretty mindless is getting pushed further and further into the background. I had even started The Sims 3 earlier to do more decorating but wasn’t really getting into it because it required too much thinking.

I don’t really know how some bloggers can write every day. Those folks are real troopers. Do they have the problem of worrying all day that they’ll have to write a post sometime before bed? Or does that not bother them? I know it’s more or less been something that’s hung over me lately.

I’ve decided that posting two or three times a week is definitely more my speed. More blogging than the “whenever-I-feel-like-it” schedules before I was in the Newbie Blogger Initiative, less blogging than this. That way I can rest and recharge for a few days in between posts and it’s no big deal if one day is particularly draining and I just write tomorrow instead. I’m still going to try and stick it out to the end of August, but it’s the completionist in me that’s the driving force.

You have no idea how tempting it was to just type “blah blah blah” over and over again and call it a day. Heh…blah, Blaugust. I amuse myself sometimes. Now I’m going to go veg or something.

[Blaugust Day 16] This is one of those posts that I’m not sure if anyone would actually care to read, but what the hell. It’ll count towards Blaugust. During Lord Crumb’s visit, we had a little bit of fun with…

[Blaugust Day 14] Every once in a while, I get messages sent through my contact form that Akismet doesn’t mark as outright spam. So far I’ve been asked if I could write articles for a WoW site (even though I…

14 comments

As someone who went from rarely posting to doing all 31 days of Blaugust last year, I can definitely agree with your sentiments. Not all people are daily bloggers, and it really boils down to finding a schedule that works for you. I’m glad you were able to see this, as slowing down may help you from feeling burnt out in the long-run.

I mean, keep going for this month by all means to fully embrace the challenge, but after that definitely re-evaluate your schedule. Whatever it takes to enjoy yourself is what you should be going for – cheers!

I suspected going into this that posting every day was not my thing but yeah, I definitely know for sure now. If I get to the point where I think Blaugust will cause me to burn out on blogging, I’ll stop posting daily. I’d rather not get sick of something I enjoy just from doing it too much.

I can definitely related to that. Even though I am at Day 19 now. But the thing is: Writing a post once a day is not what I can do. Writing whenever I feel like writing is more what I like doing. I had posts scheduled, so only one per day would be posted, but that annoyed me so much, I changed it now. But that means that while I write two or three posts on the weekends, I can relax and focus on my work during the week.

I am a bit surprised with myself that I’ve had that much enthusiasm about blogging, but as long as it’s fun, I go with it. If it starts being a chore, I would just stop and call it a month. 😉

This is the first time it’s happened to me. :p I’ve done this twice before, during November, and I think in 2014, I did not make it. In 2013 I did, but only barely and with lots of “kicking myself in the behind to write”.

I had the same issue last year, felt just like you. Somehow I got through it, with a lot of repetitive posts. It was painful, and it felt awkward not having anything to write about. This year it’s going much better. I set a goal to only get 15 posts out, so it would not be so overwhelming, seems like that helped me because I am enjoying it much more now, and if I don’t get all 31 posts, I have still made my goal.
If I can get through this, you can! Write about everything, or nothing. Write a story about your beautiful dog, or something you watched on TV.
Get lots of screenshots and just write a bit about them. Look at some old posts, see if there is something you want to revive, or continue on, maybe you have had some opinions changed about something you have written before.
Write about something you have been doing this summer, or something you would love to do one day.

Be proud you have made it this far!! I am sure you can do this. If not, you have still done a great achievement, from writing a few times a week, to everyday for so long! Just remember, it’s just a challenge, nothing serious, try to take some of that pressure off. This isn’t anything super important. It’s just a blogging challenge. Bad content is better then no content just to make it through.

Thank you for the encouragement. 🙂 It’s not so much that I’m running out of topics, I actually have quite a long list of ideas and I’ve only touched one of the writing prompts on the forums so far. It’s more that there are times when I just don’t want to write. Either I’m feeling blah in general or I’m excited to play a game and would rather do that than blog.I was feeling kind of down last night so it probably contributed greatly to not wanting to write.

Writing while burnt is never fun, I hope it gets better. While I get the completionist part, I’d hate to see anyone makes themselves miserable. For me, I’ve just been lucky in that I keep finding topics I actually want to talk about, I’m usually not an everyday poster. It’s also cut inot my gaming time noticeably, though.

Definitely not just you, I had some of that today which is why I decided not to do the super involved thing I’d been planning. And I get meh more often on my Holosuite articles for some reason, maybe my brain being contrary because I really do have a commitment to do them?

Like you, my natural pace of blogging is somewhat less than every day. It definitely takes some getting used to. Last year, I posted twice in Slacktember after “winning” Blaugust. As others have pointed out, it seems to be more a challenge of quantity than quality—much like NaNoWriMo, if you’ve ever done that. So yes, I encourage you to keep up with the Challenge (more than halfway done!) and then settle into something more reasonable (and perhaps more in-depth) next month. 🙂